Next Step

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, I’m not sure if this thread is in the right place.

I’m fairly new to game development, and since I’m doing DirectX stuff with C++, I would just like to ask what would be the next essential skill for a game programmer to know. I know theres torque, dark basic, and C#. But since I’m doing DirectX with C++, what would be the next most important one to know?

[Anonymous]

If you’re comfortable with C++ and DirectX, I’d start getting familiar with a scripting language like Lua or Python. Try linking a script in with your program and use scripted function calls to control in-game parameters.

[Anonymous]

ya a scripting language might be good.

[Anonymous]

I’ll give Python a go so. I messed with perl a while ago. My lecturer told me its on the way out though.

[Anonymous]

Rather than worrying about learning to use a scripting language, I’d concentrate on completing a decent demo. Whilest learning stuff is great, a demo is what you need. Start off with something easy, but finish it. Then build from there.

[Anonymous]

> I would just like to ask what would be the next essential skill for a game programmer to know

I’d say an essential skill is to be able to use 3rd party libraries. If you start working at a games company, you will most definitely have to work either with in-house libraries, or with 3rd party libraries purchased in by the company – long gone are the days of writing all of the code yourself.

Try downloading some popular game related libraries, and create some content using them, that you can then use as examples on your portfolio.

These ones are free –
Ogre3D for 3D rendering, http://www.ogre3d.org/
ODE or Bullet for physics, http://www.ode.org/ or http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet/

Integrating a real-time physics engine into your demos should give you some excellent looking interactive examples for your portfolio – I’d say coders with physics experience are probably up there as the most popular request from games companies these days.

If you want a low level, cross platform library for handling more of the boring functionality, try SDL http://www.libsdl.org/

If you want to really get your teeth into a large scale games related project ( this might be a larger step than you are looking for at the moment ), you could download the Blender source code from CVS and compile it ( an essential skill in itself ), and start adding to the functionality of this popular app ( to it’s built in games engine )
http://www.blender.org/cms/Source_Code.12.0.html

Mal

[Author]

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